Cat & Mouse playground

Cool wooden sculptures at this playground that's less than 2 mi from our place.

Friday night family bike & pizza activities

Afternoon at Tempelhof: stretching some legs!

Stairway rest, books with Tia

America in two pallets

So America finally arrived on our doorstep today, all 2000+ pounds of her. Mixed emotions followed: joy at being reunited with our "stuff" and anxiety about why we need so much "stuff."

Yes, I am happy to have the guitar, new kid books, and snowboots for this winter. But I also have enjoyedw shedding everything for the sake of this adventure. Somehow we've got along for the past three months without everything and life has not been constrained or stunted in any way that I can tell. Further debate on whether you own your stuff or if your stuff owns you can take place at another time though - more pressing issues press.

So the first thing you should know about shipping internationally is that no matter what the guy on the front end tells you, it is a complete crap shoot. Our experience was probably typical with various companies handing off and transferring our stuff to new entities in a massive game of Telephone stretching 1/2 around the world. The fact that anything actually arrived is quite remarkable.

So I got the call, took off work to be here. Our shipment is a month and a half late. Various excuses were provided:

• Container ship constantly harried by The White Whale throughout the north Atlantic
• Stormy seas blew ship off course, had to refuel in Nigeria
• Ship captain was Joseph Hazelwood
• Ship too big for Panama Canal, had to go around Cape Horn at last minute

I meet the guy down on the street, somewhat surprised that it is just ONE GUY since we have expressly paid for a team to carry our stuff up four flights of stairs (22 stairs each mind you). He wheels pallet #1 down the street and deposits it outside our building. We both go back for Pallet 2 and I note with horror that he's driving a Hertz rental truck. The company we used should have had their own trucks. This proves that he is miles away from the original transaction and almost certainly hasn't gotten the proper memos. We leave his truck in the middle of Grunewaldstrasse, a busy street, with his flashers on. A feeling of dread starts growing quickly in my stomach, spreading into my limbs and filling them with a dark, lethargic numbness.

We get back to the flat and he produces a digital device where I can sign to take ownership of the two pallets. I can see where this leads! Hold on dude, before I sign anything I need to make sure every one of our 48 named boxes/items is actually here. And if anything is broken then I will make a report with YOU before YOU leave. And this is AFTER YOU CARRY EVERYTHING UPSTAIRS.

Guy has no intention of any congress with that version of reality. He doesn't speak English. I can't prevail on him to help, even if it is what we paid for. He's there to drop two pallets, thank you very much, and then continue on deliveries. Sign here, I don't want to get a ticket for double-parking my truck.

It is insane but I sign the form and then stare blankly at 2000 pounds of America.

I think about the large number of items that we blithely threw into shipment boxes that I will now pay dearly for as I will heft each one 99 steps into the sky.

I pull open the first box and note that it contains six wine bottles, a Volnay 1er Cru from Domaine Carre Courbin. It sounds fancy. It is not ours. What other things in this pallet are not ours? Is someone else in Berlin at this moment opening a bankers box of 50 children's books?

So I consider this for awhile and pin-ball between sitting down on the step and openly weeping or simply heading to a bar to start drinking.

Eventually I just start unwrapping plastic and digging into the job. I think about what my late uncle Frank Wylie would have said, "Simply consider the possibility that it will ALL WORK OUT." You'll get all your stuff plus a case of amazing French wine. There, aim for that.


>MUSICAL INTERMISSION WHILE JAY SPENDS THE NEXT FEW HOURS DOING STAIRS<

25 round trips later, I have everything up the stairs. Every last matchbox car, shoe and muffin pan has been lovingly borne up to our flat. These are stairs that exhaust me when I am dragging up a bag of groceries. Now I will know better than to complain about that.

It all was worth it of course when the children entered, saw the boxes, and simultaneously exploded in a freak-out fun-spasm.

As soon as Cassandra returns from her latest biz trip, we will crack open one of those Volnays. And no I am not going to try and chase down the original owner, sorry. My back hurts.

dinner conversation

Kids discussing the migratory patterns of German versus American birds.

Jasper (to Cody): You know how the world works, right?

Cody: Yes.

Jasper: The birds come together and make a plan and decide where they are going to go. They meet up with their friends and then decide.

Cody: What if they don't need a friend.

Jasper: Well, everyone needs a friend. I have a boys group here at Kita (Berlin preschool) of my friends.

Cody: Oh.

Jasper: The German birds and the American birds get together and decide. German birds can go either North or South for the winter. American birds usually just go South for the winter.

Schlesiches Tor U-bahn station

Sunny fall morning commute scene

Even Berlin's playgrounds can get old.

Jasper goes old school, and loses a shoe.

Working from home in the "Kiez"

Gleditchstrasse 79

We live in an amazing old building that was lucky for the neighborhood in that it did not get flattened in the bombing. Buildings on either side did, and you can walk down the street and easily tell where the destruction landed.

But not "ours." I like trudging up those stairs thinking that most of the things I can see were actually here during that time, and made it through. I've never been much for architecture, but living here where it can be so easily tied up with history I could see that changing...

Old letterslot covers on the doors in our building

Lotsa stairs, yet nice artwork and chips for atmosphere.

After the Leipzig trip. Survived another one.

Wonder-Chef cooks up another culinary masterpiece!

Blue nightfall.

Teaching kids some proper skills

Living in Berlin amidst the constant assault of spray paint artistry you can't help but wonder if it is any fun. Inevitably, the kids went there.

SudGelande has a lot of old train concrete bridge canvas to practice on, so the kids went to town after getting inspired by the existing pieces.

Sud Gelande and "Urbexing"

There is a group here called "Grun Berlin" (Green Berlin) that is active in transitioning former industrial areas into public parklands. Two of their marquee projects are Tempelhof airfield and Gleisdreieck.

Tempelhof is famous as one of the main airfields used during the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift. It was decommissioned in 2010 and Grun Berlin assisted the transition from active international airport to viable parkland. The huge park (with all runways still intact) sits in between Schoneberg and Nuekolln. As soon as our shipment with the kids' bikes arrives (it is over a month late WTF) we will be spending lots of time there.

Gleisdreieck is an ex-railyard that funnelled all the traffic into the city from the South, ending up at Anhalter Hauptbahnhof, Germany's massive and beautiful train station. WWII bombing largely destroyed Anhalter and later the development of other stations and the Berlin Wall situation prevented the need to rebuild it. As a result, much of the rail infrastructure immediately to the South of the old station was unnecessary and sat unused as an industrial wasteland for a good 50 years.

What's left of the main entrance to Anhalter Station.

When the Wall fell and money started pouring into a re-unified Berlin the opportunity came to do something with the land, so Grun Berlin stepped in to rehab this landscape into another huge public park. It is on my bike commute home and one of the first places I got to know and explore: they left tons of rail lines, old buildings and bridges to explore. There is something about standing on a rail siding that once hummed with the activity of supplying an entire city: the trundling freight cars, engines, whistles, all the action going on at all hours. And now it is a quiet forest, the tracks still there but gradually getting obscured amidst the birch forest growing up between the rails.

One of the bridges over Yorckstrasse in Gleisdreieck.

This weekend we explored another of Grun Berlin's works, the SudGelande ("Southern Terrain Area") railroad marshalling yards to the South of SudKreuz. SudGelande is basically the same story as Gleisdreieck, except a couple kilometers to the South. Here we have a couple massive train sheds and other former railway buildings renovated for public art space. Concrete abutments supporting former rail bridges extend nearly a kilometer through the forest, all designated for spray-paint artists.

A raised walkway takes visitors through the first generation woods and past a number of industrial sculptures. Rounding out the place is a 60 meter water tower, a steam engine and tender rescued from the forest, and tons of tracks, switches and iron electric towers poetically rusting away. As if it wasn't obvious, the central theme of this park is how art and nature intersect.

The Roundtable pit. Still works.

 

One of the buildings that was not restored was a 3 storey signal house. It is fenced off but you can sneak in fairly easily and poke your nose in the windows of the crumbling building to gaze at old stairwells, rusted heaters and graffiti. When things are left "as is" the concept of history seems much fresher.

This concept of Urban Exploring has been gradually gaining momentum in the back of my head and here it is in its most basic form: communing with the past in slightly off-limit areas. The historical development of Berlin with the war, the wall and the legacy of the GDR in the surrounding areas has created a number of locations for "Urbexers." From old trenchlines in forests to dilapidated GDR factory installations, a vibrant community of people are constantly running around Berlin sneaking into places and exploring this lost history.

While so much of Berlin is being patched up and renovated with the money pouring in here, there are still plenty of historical oddities that result in huge industrial areas sitting around waiting for the future. Many are closed off to prevent vandalism, fires, or people otherwise hurting themselves while traipsing around unsecured areas. Others are quite easy to explore.

On the periphery of nearly everything you do here is a little tidbit of exploring and history to enjoy, which is what makes this such a fascinating place.

Train tracks removed, tunnel remains. Spray painters followed.

Heading out On a rainy Sunday

For some adventuring..

Schoneberg Rathaus flea market

The kids learning to haggle auf Deutsch. And we bought the first bier stein of this trip...